Seven Years that Changed the World: Perestroika in ...

The best account about the end of the cold war:
Archie Brown has written the best account about the end of the Cold War. According to Brown it was Gorbachev and not either Reagan or the democrats in Eastern Europe that were responsible for the fall of Gorbachev. Brown contradicts the thesis by Timothy Garton Ash which states that the events in Poland in the late seventies and early eighties were responsible for the fall of Communism by stating in fact these events actually helped the hardliners in the Kremlin to crack down on dissidents in the early nineteen eighties. Also Brown disputes Gaddis's claim that Reagan alone was reponsible for the ending the Cold War by stating that if a hardliner and not Gorbachev could have attained the leadership of the Soviet Union, he would have reacted more strongly to Reagan's policies toward the Soviet Union. Finally Brown disputes Matthew Evangelista's theory that a independent civil society in the Soviet Union was responsible for its fall, by writing that most of those in the Communist party were nationalist and were not liberal and it was Gorbachev that implemented reforms that put Russia at least on a more liberal direction. This should be essential reading for those who believe that the West or its institutions could somehow influence Russian domestic politics.